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Ancient DNA continues to rewrite corn s 9,000-year society-shaping history
An assortment of corn cobs of varying ages found at the El Gigante rock shelter site in Honduras.
WASHINGTON, DC
.- Some 9,000 years ago, corn as it is known today did not exist. Ancient peoples in southwestern Mexico encountered a wild grass called teosinte that offered ears smaller than a pinky finger with just a handful of stony kernels. But by stroke of genius or necessity, these Indigenous cultivators saw potential in the grain, adding it to their diets and putting it on a path to become a domesticated crop that now feeds billions.
Scientists long assumed maize traveled from Central America to South America
A new study shows it was a two-way street, with corn reintroduced northward over 4,000 years ago
This led to more productive varieties, making corn a more important staple
The results show domestication doesn t just travel in a straight line
The corn on your holiday table may have more in common with ancient wild varieties from South America than the domesticated version believed to have originated in southwestern Mexico.
It s long been assumed domesticated maize traveled south from Central America, but a new study suggests the trade actually went in both directions.
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First partially domesticated from teosinte, a wild grass, maize has only reluctantly given up the secrets of its long development. Genetic research, Kennett said, has been challenging because a scarcity of suitable cobs in an environment not kind to organic material. Researchers, however, caught a break in Honduras.
“Well-preserved maize is extremely rare in the Americas, but the El Gigante rock shelter has over 10,000 specimens to work with,” he said. “Most of these fragmentary remains date later than 2,500 years ago, and locating earlier material in the assemblage was challenging and required directly radiocarbon dating large numbers of maize cobs.
Thomas Harper
Some 9,000 years ago, corn as it is known today did not exist. Ancient peoples in southwestern Mexico encountered a wild grass called teosinte that offered ears smaller than a pinky finger with just a handful of stony kernels. But by stroke of genius or necessity, these Indigenous cultivators saw potential in the grain, adding it to their diets and putting it on a path to become a domesticated crop that now feeds billions.
Despite how vital corn, or maize, is to modern life, holes remain in the understanding of its journey through space and time. Now, a team co-led by Smithsonian researchers have used ancient DNA to fill in a few of those gaps.